Cloud Computing, Making Businesses Simple and Easy

Cloud computing is the latest technology trend, which small to medium businesses may be missing out on. These businesses have been relying more on physical servers, depriving themselves from the technological advancement.

In simple terms, cloud computing means shifting your on-premise server and its contents to an offsite, hosted server, which is then managed by someone else. To access the application on cloud you need a desktop, notebook or tablet, and a reasonable broadband connection to the WAN (wide area network), which can be accessed from your home, office or on the road. The connection can use ADSL, SHDSL, Cable, Fiber or Ethernet.

The shift to the cloud is less expensive and more practical, as you don’t have to invest in complex hardware, system administration or server equipment. Moreover, you receive monthly, tax deductible computing services and software, giving you the flexibility to scale up or down whenever required.

The cloud also provides you with far superior security solutions. In addition they are geared for 99.9 percent uptime via uninterruptable power, fire suppression and multiple redundancy mechanism, providing reliability which far in excess of what small business severs achieve. There is regular data back-up, and systems are virtualized for quick transfer to another cloud server, should there be any disaster.

The recent controversy over PRISM may raise questions about privacy. However, there are strict regulatory and compliance procedures in place to maintain data integrity and security over the cloud, which providers focus spend considerable time and effort on delivering.

Cloud applications also make it easier to store heavy files, like CAD and digital editing files, directly in the cloud while creating a back-up. With the growing popularity and capability of the cloud, many software applications have begun to migrate to hosted environments and are churning out a good share of cost savings.